Here's an age-old question that economists (navel-gazing) and sociologists (being upset with economic imperialism by the queen of social sciences) have pondered for a long while. My fav resource was David Colander's old book (and revamped classic), The Making of an Economist: TLDR on that, from memory a decade later, is that it's all a circle jerk: an economist is whatever economists consider doing economics work.
Here's Soumaya (who, I believe I looked up, is actually related to Mr. Keynes himself... great-niece or something; Keynes, famously, had no children -- that quote about the long run, etc #1537872) asking the same question:
**Am I an economist?**Since completing my undergraduate and master’s degrees in economics, I’ve been in the Government Economic Service (briefly), been an economic researcher (less briefly) and written about economics (for ages). In Britain, no one ever questions the “economist” part of my identity, at least not to my face. But in America, as one of the tribe once matter-of-factly explained to me, I don’t count. I don’t have a PhD.
That is the entrance exam to the centralized labor market/guild that is the economics profession. Then again, it's highest honor (Nobel Prize) has quite often been bestowed on peeps without a PhD in economics (Ostrom, Kahneman, Nash etc)
In the US, where one really doesn’t have to have studied very much economics to major in it, requiring a postgraduate qualification makes more sense. But requiring an economics PhD would exclude several at the pinnacle of the profession. Some 13 of the 96 economics Nobel Prize winners wouldn’t qualify.
Indeed, much economic knowledge and insight is left outside the curriculum of an econ degree at all levels.
"As one who falls into this grey zone, I roll my eyes when questions of who qualifies as an economist creep into the public debate."
"There is no economics licensing board," she says but I suspect that's mostly wrong; technically, and for all intents and purposes there is.
Whether used against America’s Jay Powell, a trade lawyer turned top central banker, or Britain’s Gary Stevenson, a YouTuber with a master’s in economics and strong views on tax, credentialism isn’t cool.
Think of economists as a guild whose members police who is allowed to join and what counts as true economics. By guarding the definition of economic expertise, they preserve their influence over the public and public policy.
Does it count if you have some credentialed pieces of university paper with economics on the top? Also, what about the central bankers?
Discounting experience in paid work entirely feels silly. The economy exists outside of university walls — surely one can become a specialist later? That would bring in the 23 per cent of central bankers over the 2000s and 2010s who didn’t have an economics degree.
Maybe it's a state of mind? An understanding of (and appreciation for!) markets and prices?
Other sniff tests don't work well either:
- methods are widely shared among other social sciences
- paying attention to incentives and behavior is good enough, but shared by anyone and everyone
As the sociologist Marion Fourcade has written, whereas in Britain economic authority is “more fluid and informally defined”, in America economic competence is “more firmly rooted in the possession of a specialist university degree”. Which explains my own identity crisis. As the competition for public policy influence continues, don’t expect the argument over who can claim the title to go away.
oh well. What do the schtackers think?
I really don't know what the heck this post is about.
Who said you need a phd to be called an economist? Talking heads on CNBC get called economists all the time, it seems, when not all of them have PhDs?
An economist is anyone who spends time thinking about, studying, and writing about economics, which itself can be broadly defined as the study of resource allocation. Yes, it's very broad.
I don't know what this American / British divide crap is. Sounds like the person had one conversation with an American and extrapolated?
There is, perhaps, an annoyance when PhD level economists hear undergraduate-level economists talk about economics, because their thoughts are often shallow. The gap between undergraduate and PhD level economics is larger than perhaps any other discipline. it's because the undergraduate econ major serves an almost entirely different purpose than a phd in economics.
I don't think many people would seriously contend that you need a PhD in economics. David Friedman has no degree in economics, while having written extensively in economics and worked as a professor of economics for decades.
My view is that there are many sufficient conditions to qualify as an economist and few necessary ones. I'd say either having a PhD in economics or being employed as an economist both count. For someone who meets neither of those conditions, they would need to somehow have contributed to the field and have deep knowledge. I don't think just being a popularizer would count.
These criteria conveniently exclude Robert Reich, who I refuse to acknowledge as an economist.
ah fuck. Here I was hoping that shitposting on a money-is-the-moderator online forum was enough to consider me an economist.
Dreams shattered.
I count you in the club. Phrasing that part more precisely, "being an unoriginal popularizer wouldn't count".
YEEE-HAAAA! Also, I have huuundreds of articles published for The Daily Economy... surely that weighs in my favor too?! (Maybe my stack of Mises pieces count heavier in Undisc's book...?)
Sort of, but not in the way you’re probably thinking.
Being willing and able to call out the errors of your own side and point out other work that’s being overlooked is legitimately additive.
she has two purposes with this piece.
That is interesting. Develop? Examples? Saaaay more as Eric Weinstein likes to say when he's excited about something you said
Oh, plenty of examples in my pleb economist posts.
Probably one of the biggest culprits in undergraduate econ education is the mistaken ooga booga idea that GDP growth good recession bad.
I mean, yeah, growth is good and recession bad, but it's way more nuanced than that. Not to mention all the measurement problems of GDP.
A great example of this stupid level of economic thinking is this CNBC article which is titled Americans are holding onto devices longer than ever and it’s costing the economy and includes the following gem:
It forgets that re-using old devices is providing a flow of services that simply isn't being measured in current GDP numbers. Not realizing this will make you think that re-using old devices is resource negative, but it should be resource positive; we just don't measure things properly.
yes, of course.
...but it's a little bit of a silly strawman -- or at least addressing a very weak version of an argument. I was surprised at Sven Beckert talking negatively about "the economy" as if it's a living being with moral agency that we must care for... but I never see anybody (...but a blockhead!) say that. All thoughtful people I know understand that "the" economy is a shorthand for businesses and consumers aggregated in some way. Broken window fallacy; spending goes somewhere etc; consumption means destruction etc.
So yeah, this is a typical example of a retarded consumption-numbers-only view of "the" economy which no serious thinker, insider or outside of economics holds. That there are retards, and hot-shot history professors, that do isn't exactly surprising... but do you think undergraduate econ education is to blame for this?
Serious thinkers probably don't hold this view, but I do think many people in the business world with a shallow understanding may.
I wouldn't say undergraduate econ is to blame for it, but I'd say that we probably don't do enough to dispel the notion of it. But I'm also not blaming anyone in particular, econ is hard enough to teach to young people who haven't made many economic decisions in their lives, asking them to contemplate tricky measurement and philosophical issues is a lot to throw on top.
Right, yeah I buy that. Good 👍
And one might ask: What is it about the PhD training that elevates their economic thinking?
I truly believe that writing down mathematical models trains this ability. It forces you to think carefully about the forces involved, including crucially the difference between a flow and a stock, and how these things relate. It also forces you to think about measurement when you want to take your model to the data.
This is why I think the Austrians are missing the mark. Yes, mainstream economists are may be overconfident about their mathematical models; but the act of modeling I really do think trains you to think rigorously about what's going on in the economy.
meeeh. Maybe it helps (for some) for tractability and seriously/clearly stating your position. Per Taleb, it's easier to macrobullshit than microbullshit... but I think you can get there quite easily by simple middle-school type verbal reasoning too. (After all, Austrian econ training is all about that; no need for fancy PhDs to get the point)
I think it's possible to arrive at the conclusions with careful verbal reasoning, but what I'd say writing down the model does is that it forces you to confront the precision.
A bit easier to get away with hand-wavy arguments that sound correct but aren't precise about assumptions when using verbal reasoning.
I'd say that mathematical models can train that ability, but I've seen plenty of people successfully avoid actually thinking about the economics underlying their models. Tricky questions are often met with a bunch of handwaving about simplifying assumptions and tractability.
I think it's in the reasoning about identification in econometric models (which Austrians also dislike) or the incentive structure in experimental design (which Austrians also dislike) that PhD students are more forced to improve their economic thinking.
one thing I think Austrians can perhaps appreciate at least is that by writing down the model of behavior, then seriously working through the econometric implications, you truly then highlight the seen and the unseen, which is wholly what makes economics such a challenging subject